Please meet Jeremy Randolph, the newest software engineer in ESnet’s Software Measurement and Analysis Group!

Jeremy has an extensive background in distributed systems, working for companies like DataDog, Fitbit, and Google, to build resilient backends to power customer data visualization and real user interactions. Before that, he also worked in the video game industry at 2K Sports, LucasArts, “The Force Unleashed” franchise, and number of other sports titles.   

What brought you to ESnet?

Recently, I’ve been spending chunks of my free time watching math and physics channels. I’ve also tried some publicly available lecture series with varying degrees of success. In the recent past, working on distributed systems has been rewarding, but I’ve never felt passionate about the wider mission statement of the various companies I’ve worked at. I see ESnet as a chance to build interesting systems while also contributing to our scientific understanding of the universe.

What is the most exciting thing going on in your field right now?

The slow, but steady migration to cloud-based environments and virtual systems. Software Engineers tell horror stories about how our vocation used to have to write our programs on punch cards and would get the program’s output the next day (including things like syntax errors). Real-time syntax highlighting of compile errors in my  IDE (integrated development environment) allows me to focus on the bigger picture and more complicated systems. I suspect the next generation of software engineers will also tell horror stories about DevOps and how we had to have intimate knowledge about what hardware our code was running on and where specifically in the world it was running.

What book would you recommend?

Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke.